She sat upon the sheetless bed, recalling years of sleepless nights…her hands clenched and unclenched as she waited, the first rays of sunrise creeping over the windowsill.
She tried to remember if she had ever been loved. Her parents, now dead, had disowned her when she'd married. She had no other relatives that she knew of.
Had her husband ever loved her? It had seemed so, when they first met. But looking back, she realized it was hungry need for both of them. He needed to feel in control, she needed to feel needed.
And they ended up needing to get married.
There was never a honeymoon, actual or in feeling. Too little work, and too much drink had worn her husband down. Most days were marked by wounds, sometimes physical ones that were soon healed via her knowledge of the special properties of certain herbs and plants. But more often the wounds were verbal, and she knew of no recipe to cure the soul.
And finally, there had been that last conflict.
Domestic abuse, her solicitor had argued. The Ministry would have fought for her, if it had not been for the problem of her missing son.
Her son, who had been there one moment, smiling, a flower in his hair.
And in the next moment was gone.
They thought she had also killed her son. If her husband was responsible, they argued, why didn't she say so?
But she did not know. She did not think that her husband had killed their son. Their son just went away. Without a word. Just one more person who did not love her.
So what did she care for life now?
The door to the room clanked open; a woman in a uniform, and two men in suits waited for her.
"It's time," one of the men stated.
Eileen stood up, and quietly walked out to the gallows.